Murder by the Book (3 page)

“Gerald—” he began, and Mr. Worthington began to write in his small notebook. And Jerry was aware that his hand was reaching toward Pam's straw handbag, in which, when they are dressed for tennis, all things are carried, including billfolds.

But then Ashley, who was looking toward the hotel, made a small “uh-uhing” sound, and the man named Worthington looked in the same direction, and Pam and Jerry looked.

Paul Grogan, managing director of The Coral Isles, was advancing, under the white plume of his hair—a plume which had become a banner. While he was still many yards away, Mr. Grogan held his right hand out stiffly, the index finger pointing like a gun.

Mr. Worthington did not say anything at all. He began to walk briskly toward the patio, beyond which there was an exit to the street. Mr. Ashley said, “Well …” and also went.

“And stay out,” Mr. Grogan said, still from a distance, and in what was not quite a shout. “Catch you here once more and …”

He did not finish. It was evident that he was not going to catch the Messrs. Worthington and Ashley. Not without running. He did not run. He walked on, still briskly, to the Norths. He said, “That pair of small-time con men. I hope you didn't fall for—”

“Of course not,” Pam North said. “We never even thought of it, did we, Jerry?”

Jerry swallowed. Jerry said, “Of course not.”

“Ashley,” Grogan said. “Not that his name is Ashley, probably. Anyway, he's been at it for years, with one partner and another. Other one's new. Heard somewhere he used to be a lawyer in New York and got in some kind of a jam. Got in jail too, apparently. Anyway—” He shrugged his shoulders, and responsibility for two small-time con men slipped from them.

“Hope I didn't break up your game,” Grogan said. “Dragging Dr. Piersal away like that. Dr. Townsend—he's the house physician, you know—is under the—” Grogan interrupted himself. One does not, operating a hotel in Key West, speak disparagingly of the weather. “Laid up,” he said. “One of the guests came down with something—something minor, I'm sure—and I asked Edmund to look in on her. His line of country and—” Again he stopped.

“What,” Pam asked, “is Dr. Piersal's line of country?”

“Internist,” Grogan said. “Pretty well-known New York man. He's—”

“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “I have heard of him. Isn't he a man who gets called in at murder trials? Expert on forensic medicine? Wait a minute. Wasn't he a deputy medical examiner of New York City for a while? Wasn't he—”

“Lectures on forensic medicine at Dyckman University,” Grogan said. “Yes, that's the man. Primarily an internist, but the other things too. The point is—”

“You didn't break up the game,” Pam said. “We'd lost our fourth already. Rebecca Payne. She—there was something else she had to do.”

Paul Grogan nodded his head.

“I hope there was,” he said. “I really do. I'm afraid the girl isn't having a very good time, y'know. We've got so few singles at the moment. Never very many any time, of course, but just now—”

A young man in a red coat appeared on the steps which led down from the wide porch. He looked around. Paul Grogan had his back to the hotel.

“I'm wanted for something, apparently,” he said. “Lunch in the patio today, with the wind down.” Paul Grogan faced the Atlantic. He took two deep breaths. He went away toward the hotel.

Jerry gazed after him. He did this for some seconds. After Mr. Grogan had reached the hotel and gone into it, Jerry continued to look in the direction.

“All right,” Pam said; “grant he has got them.”

Jerry returned, not rapidly. He said, “Huh?”

“Eyes in the back of,” Pam said. “Probably standard equipment for hotel managers. Or maybe it's like dogs.”

Jerry returned his attention entirely to his wife. “Huh?” seemed somewhat inadequate, but he used it.

“Invisible whistles,” Pam said. “I mean inaudible, of course. The bellmen carry them and Mr. Grogan tunes in and—where
had
you gone, Jerry?”

“Something rang a bell,” Jerry said. “About Dr. Piersal. It was in the papers. Last fall sometime.”

Pam North lifted her shoulders, disclaiming knowledge. She is a selective reader of newspapers—crosswords and bridge columns; book and play reviews; James Reston and Walter Lippmann. And stories about children the world has made unhappy. Having disclaimed with her shoulders, she shook her head.

“Malpractice suit,” Jerry said. “I don't remember the details. Surviving relative of a non-surviving patient. The Damocles sword over all physicians. Malice and cupidity and—” He shrugged.

“And sometimes, I suppose, malpractice,” Pam said.

It had not been, this time, Jerry told her. Newspapers generally play down such suits. This one had been rather special, partly because of Dr. Piersal's standing; partly because the jury had found for him after ten minutes' consideration; largely because of the remarks of Supreme Court Justice Bleeker, who had commended the jury for its wisdom, and gone further. Justice Bleeker was notably peppery, and inclined to have his say.

He had had it this time at length. Jerry did not remember the details, but the burden had been scathing. This suit against a man of Dr. Piersal's standing, his acknowledged distinction in his field, his record of unselfish service to—in any event, this suit had been a flagrant example of the unjustified harassment to which physicians are too much subject. It was hard for Justice Bleeker to believe that plaintiff's lawyer had not recognized this. It was hard for Justice Bleeker to believe that a desire to besmirch had not been linked, in this instance, with the desire for gain. In fewer words, Justice Bleeker took a dim view.

And this had made the papers, as the remarks of Supreme Court Justice Bleeker frequently did.

“Anybody can tell Dr. Piersal's a good doctor,” Pam said, after Jerry's resumé. “Just by looking at him.”

Jerry looked at Pam.

“He was so nice to poor Miss Payne,” Pam said. “We'd better change, hadn't we? Unless you want another?”

“Had enough for the second day,” Jerry said.

They walked to their room and showered, Pam for the second time within a few hours, with the expressed hope that she did not prove soluble. Jerry's change was to walking shorts and polo shirt; Pam's to a greenish print dress. They went to sit on stools at the outdoor bar near the swimming pool, and at first they were alone.

“They don't drink much here, do they?” Pam said. “The poor dears. Just sit and swelter. And turn those odd colors, of course.”

Slowly, they sipped long drinks. Idly, they watched young men in white jackets and women—not so uniformly young—setting up tables in the patio. “There's the doctor,” Pam said, after some time, and nodded a directing head. Dr. Edmund Piersal was standing near the tennis courts, looking around. Pam held a hand up and closed fingers, beckoning. Piersal waved, and started toward them.

He wore slacks and a dark blue polo shirt and a white jacket. He sat on the other side of Pam. He said, “Sorry, occupational hazard. Paul asked—”

“He told us,” Pam said, and Dr. Piersal nodded his head and said, “Gin and tonic,” to the barman, and waggled a thumb at the North glasses and said, “When they're ready.”

Pam hoped it had not been anything serious.

“Tummy ache,” Piersal said. “Sort of thing that worries Paul, of course. Wanted me to find out if she ate here last night. I don't mean that was his primary concern but—” He shrugged wide shoulders.

“Did she?” Pam said.

Piersal laughed briefly. He said she hadn't. He said that had been a relief to Paul Grogan.

“Anyway,” he said, “according to her version of her history, it's functional. ‘Nervous indigestion.' Doesn't mean a damn thing, of course. The term doesn't. Useful, because a good many people have it. ‘Presentday tensions,' as the television medicine men say. They tell me you're a book publisher, Mr. North.”

They turned from medicine, as it was evident Dr. Piersal wished to turn. A patient, Pam decided, is a patient, even if anonymous, and so not to be discussed. Jerry admitted he published books. He admitted it a little glumly; it was not, that day, a subject which enlivened his spirits. Book-of-the-Month had, after what Jerry considered a good deal of hemming and hawing, decided against “Away Again.” Lester Spears, whose option had run out, had been seen lunching with Bingham, of Bingham, Foster, Kelly and Breckenridge, and Spears's last had made the list. An author into which North Books had been patiently poking advances, in the dimming hope of a jackpot, no longer answered letters. Yet continued to endorse checks.

Pam said, after a time, “You must get in quite a bit of tennis, Dr. Piersal.”

Dr. Piersal did get in quite a bit of tennis. There was a club—call it a club—near Hawthorne which owned two excellent clay courts, housed for winter. Piersal got up a couple of times a week. Nobody too good, nobody too bad. “You'd both fit in fine,” Piersal said.

They talked of tennis, as tennis players must. They sipped long drinks, and the sun was warm on their backs, but the easterly tempered it. Dr. Piersal recommended, mildly, the greyhound races at Stock Island. He had been there the night before. Men in chef's caps began to carry platters to the buffet table; a large fan at one end of the table began to blow flies away. From the sunning beach, men and women began to trickle; a small turbulence formed at one end of the buffet table.

Jerry finished his drink; Jerry said, “Well—” Dr. Piersal said, “Let me. I suggested it,” and signed the check. It did not matter. There would be another day; tomorrow would be another day; a week from tomorrow would be still another. “Think about this Hawthorne place,” Piersal said, and stood up. “We certainly will,” Pam said. There was a place for lunch near the Aquarium, Piersal told them. The broiled shrimps with white wine sauce were excellent. “Perhaps tomorrow,” Jerry said. It would be hot on Duval Street; cars would be creeping on Duval Street in the day's heat. The trade winds seem to die in Duval Street.

They watched Dr. Edmund Piersal, a tall, lithe man who walked like a man of thirty, as he went toward the hotel—went to walk through it, toward car or taxi; toward, in the end, shrimps broiled in white wine sauce.

“A nice man,” Pam said.

“Very.”

“This place in Hawthorne sounds interesting. I suppose we ought to.”

“It sounds interesting.”

“But we won't, will we?”

“I don't suppose we will, Pam.”

“We're stick-in-the-muds, aren't we?”

“It's pleasant mud.”

The thing to do with a buffet is to walk around it first, to case it. Otherwise one may come too late on the especially succulent, come with plate already piled high. It is well to stake a table, preferably one under an umbrella. The Norths found a shaded table; put tennis rackets and a can of balls on it, marking their homestead rights. “You'll never eat all that,” Pam said, and a waitress brought them iced coffee. Pam was wrong. “My,” Pam said, “you're not like that at home.”

The New York
Times
had come. The
Herald Tribune
had come. Blizzards had been defied. “All main city thoroughfares are reported clear,” the
Herald Tribune
assured them. The
Times
, on page 94 referred, with marked detachment, to “yesterday's light snowfall.” Jerry dozed; dreamed briefly of pelicans.

“Fresh or salt?” Pam said, after she had finished the
Times
crossword.

The pelicans flew, sluggishly, from Jerry's dreams.

They left the porch, changed to swim. They went halfway out on the fishing pier, and down a flight of wooden steps to a bit of the Atlantic which lived in a cage of netting. “To discourage barracuda,” Jerry had said the day before, and had discouraged Pam, so that they dunked in the fresh-water pool. But Mr. Grogan, after dinner, had laughed at that—laughed, Jerry thought, a little excessively.

They floated in salt water, now and then swishing mildly. Small fish, conceivably infant barracuda, swam with them. Very tiny fish swam in a formation of hundreds. Pam splashed a hand and the fish, formation still impeccable, turned aside. “They must drill and drill,” Pam said. “Like cadets.” They could look under the pier, set on piles above the water. Thin edges of light worked between planks, made bright, straight ribbons on the water. Above them, on the pier, people walked back and forth. Beyond the netting, gulls sat on water, bobbing gently, making an occasional strident remark.

The Norths went back to their room, and showered again—“Do they have to use this much chlorine?” “The Navy is our first line of defense”—and mildly debated more tennis, but were interrupted by sleep. They went to the Penguin Bar and had a drink. They went to a place, built out over water, called the A. & B. Lobster House, and, not sharing native belief that Florida “lobsters” are edible, had pompano. They went back to the hotel and, briefly, danced in the patio.

“A day of accomplishment,” Jerry said, as they walked down the second-floor corridor to their room. “A night's repose well earned.”

“They've turned down the beds,” Pam said. “I think we ought to live this way all the time.”

3

It was not, this time, the sound of his own voice that wakened Gerald North. It was his own name. It was “Jerry!”
Jerry!”
Hands were on his shoulders, shaking him awake. “Wake up,” Pam was saying. “Please—
please
—wake up!
Jerry.”

Jerry was awake. Wakening was a plunge from warmth into icy water.

Pam was leaning over him, her hands on his shoulders.

Her face, so near his, was wrenched. Color had gone out of her face. “Wake up,” she said once more and then he swung up, carrying her with him, and she held to him. She was trembling; her body shook.